1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an imaging apparatus, and more particularly to display control in standby mode.
2. Description of the Related Art
Heretofore, video camera devices using a recording medium such as a magnetic tape, optical disk or the like have become popular and achieved widespread use. In such video camera devices, as shown in FIG. 2, in general, a video camera body 200 is equipped with a finder 202 or a liquid crystal panel 204 for displaying input images or indicating modes of the video camera. Reference numeral 206 denotes a mode change-over switch, and 208 indicates a toggle switch for switching start and pause of recording in camera mode. In such a video camera in many cases, in the camera mode at the time when an electric-power source is turned on, three modes, that is, “stop”, “standby” and “recording” modes may take place by operating the mode change-over switch 206 and the toggle switch 208. The “stop” mode is the state that the electric-power source of the video camera body is off, and all the operations except for that of the power switch are not allowed.
The “standby” mode is the state that the operation of the camera is temporarily stopped by operation of the toggle switch 208 upon setting the mode change-over switch 206 to “camera”. In the standby mode, no actual recording is effected although it is possible to display input images from the camera on the liquid crystal panel 204 or the finder 202 and the recoding medium is in a writable state.
The “recording” mode is the state that video data are actually being recorded on the recording medium. This state is realized by depressing the toggle switch 208 upon setting the mode change-over switch 206 to “camera”.
The information indicating current operating states of the video camera except for the “stop” mode may be displayed on a display in a manner of overlaying it on the input video images from the camera.
When the “standby” mode is changed to the “recording” mode by operating the mode change-over switch 206 and the toggle switch 208 by a user, a recording lamp may be turned on to notify the transition of the mode on the finder or liquid crystal panel, while characters “during recording” may be displayed and beep sound may be produced to notify the completion of the transition to the recording mode. These functions may be provided in many video cameras.
As disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H07-193771, in addition to the above functions, there is provided a function of turning a display screen into monochrome display when in standby mode, thereby enabling a user to easily recognize the current mode.
However, it would be generally difficult for users, particularly beginners to distinguish between the standby and recording modes only by the conventional indications and the audible notification in the standby mode described above, so that they would be likely to forget the transition to the recording mode, resulting in failure to record images in many cases.
There are many concrete cases that users can not recognize the mode indication on a display unit because their attention would be absorbed in input video images themselves when they are in a state of tension.
In the function of notifying the transition from the standby mode to the recording mode by the beep sound, the beep sound is generated only when the mode transition occurs, so that a user can not know a situation that the video camera is left in standby mode.
In the case of using the monochrome display in the standby mode, moreover, in a situation of awaiting a recording chance, while watching a moving object in crowds, for example, in an athletic meeting or the like, the visibility would be remarkably lowered, then resulting in frequent failures to record images.